For just over 30 minutes, artist and filmmaker Sue de Beer transports
her audience on a hyperrealist journey in her newest film and
installation entitled "The Ghosts." The two-channel video debuted
Wednesday night to an unlikely melange of board members and cult
followers. Exhibited in the Park Avenue Armory's Veterans Room, a regal
space with details of inlaid wood and gothic chandeliers designed in
1880, de Beer added white mohair carpet and oversized silver pillows,
creating a space where the audience was forced at once to be both voyeur
and participant.

"The Ghosts," mimics a giallo - an Italian genre that mixes horror and
mystery and gained popularity in the late 1960s. Through four
monologues, it tells the story of a hypnotist who can return lost spans
of time and memory to their rightful owners. Those owners in turn
experience the moments as if for the first time.

The idea for the film came after de Beer had ceased to create anything
for a year. It was 2007, and de Beer was constantly traveling between
New York and Berlin. "My personal life was chaotic," de Beer said. "I
was disconnected from personal relationships, never quite where I was
supposed to be."

To refocus de Beer spent hours in a sensory deprivation tank and sought
out hypnotists in both cities. When it came time to write, de Beer found
herself riding the Berlin U-Bahn alone after the sun set with a
notebook. She then locked herself in a room for two months straight.
Besides her notebook, a chair, desk and blanket were her only company,
not unlike one of the characters in the film.

"I lived in this in-between," de Beer said. "I had this feeling in the
script, I was longing to move into fantasy space."

After she finished the script, which centers around a troubled money
manager, played by first-time actor Jon Spencer, singer and guitarist of
the "Jon Spencer Blues Explosion," a young woman and a record-store
clerk, de Beer shelved it. That was the fall of 2008. She shot for two
weeks in the fall of 2009 and for one week in summer 2010.

"Throughout shooting she kept saying, "do less, do less," said Claire
Buckingham, who plays the young woman. "Sue just wanted to take away the
performance of acting and have the simplicity of the space and the
moment." To do that, Buckingham said de Beer called for long takes. So
long that Buckingham actually fell asleep during one of the scenes where
her character visits the hypnotist, played by Jutta Koether, a painter
and musician.

While the deviled quail egg with miso and salmon French toast detracted
from the eeriness of the evening, Andy Comer's nine-song performance
added to it. Comer and de Beer had collaborated on several past projects
including their 2009 performance of "Radio Play" at The Kitchen in the
Lower East Side.

"Her film is beautiful," Comer said, although neither he nor de Beer sat
in on either of the evening's two screenings. "The film questions dream
life and tries to make sense of the past while dealing with loss. There
are few more relatable topics than that."